


The Person Standing Opposite Me Now

by Daisiestdaisy (Doyle)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Minor Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 17:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4029355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Daisiestdaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's five in the morning, it's raining, and Richard is outside Jared's door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Person Standing Opposite Me Now

**Author's Note:**

> Not to give away the entire plot (such as it is), but this was for the prompt meme request "declaration of love in the rain", here: http://sv-ficmeme.dreamwidth.org/282.html?thread=538#cmt538

The rain wakes him. Or, more accurately, the rain wakes Patroclus and Clytemnestra. All week, while their unspayed siblings have been working themselves into a mating-season frenzy in the yard cages, they’ve been perfect houseguests – guesthouse-guests? – but the gentle pattering on the roof and against the windows has them agitated. They’re whining for attention, nosing against the mesh at the front of their cages.  
  
Jared rolls onto his side at the edge of the bed and reaches out, his height and the smallness of the space enough together that his fingertips just brush Patroclus’s side. He shushes them both, and smiles as he makes a mental note to point out to Richard, who still insists that he speaks German in his sleep, that he’s somehow never woken two ferrets who can’t even sleep through a rain shower.  
  
It’s nice, lying drowsy beneath the covers, thinking about Richard and enjoying the warmth and the sound of rain, and as the animals settle down Jared lets his hand drop. He’s almost asleep again when there’s a noise at the door, barely louder than the rain; quiet enough that he’s not sure he heard it at all until the second knock, a little louder, and then – "Jared?"  
  
In the four or five seconds it takes him to register Richard’s voice, scramble out of bed, and make it to the door, Jared has already constructed a dozen things that could have gone wrong at Pied Piper since midnight. And panicked about them. And assumed full responsibility. He should have made sure his phone volume was set to high before he went to sleep: yes, he checked, but did he double-check? He’s been awake for five or ten minutes and hasn’t looked at his texts yet. He _left_ , in the first place, selfishly let Richard talk him into catching some sleep _in a different house_ while Richard kept working.  
  
He wrenches open the door. "I’m sorry..."  
  
"Sorry," Richard blurts out at the same time, and they blink at one another in the grey dawn light of Noah’s back yard. "Sorry for waking you, I mean."  
  
"You didn’t. Or, not really, because the ferrets... what happened?"  
  
"Uh... I don’t know? You tell me, they’re your ferrets. Or Noah’s ferrets, I guess."  
  
Richard’s mind is brilliant, and beautiful, but it’s also often extremely literal. "What happened with the company?" Jared clarifies, and when Richard looks even more confused: "What’s wrong?"  
  
"Nothing," Richard says quickly. "Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s... really good, actually. Except I didn’t think this through. Forgot how early it was."  
  
"You’ve been up all night."  
  
"Yeah, but the build’s done. I was heading to bed when this started." He jerks his head upwards at the grey sky, and now that there seems to be no immediate catastrophe Jared registers that his hoodie’s not only pulled up but soaked through.  
  
"Richard, you must be freezing. Come inside."  
  
"I need to tell you something," Richard says, and then doesn’t.  
  
Jared’s seen Richard struggle to find words a thousand times, and he’s happy to wait for them to come to him as long as it takes now, so long as they can both be warm and dry while that happens. "Tell me inside."  
  
But Richard bites his lip and stays where he is, arms-length away outside the door. "Kind of have to say it out here."  
  
And Jared gets it. Why Richard doesn’t want to come into his room. Why they can’t have this conversation where one of the others might hear them.  
  
He wishes he was a better person. He wishes he didn’t feel ten times worse in this instant than when he thought something had happened to Pied Piper. He wishes Richard hadn’t kissed him nine weeks and four days ago, because he knows he could have been content forever just being colleagues and friends if he’d never had a taste of anything more.  
  
He can’t bring himself to wish that Richard had never walked into Gavin Belson’s office. So that’s comforting, at least, knowing that being broken up with at five a.m. in the rain is not the worst case scenario.  
  
Jared wraps his arms around himself, suddenly freezing for reasons that have nothing to do with standing in an open doorway in a t-shirt and thin pyjama pants.  
  
Richard, for his part, doesn’t look like this is fun for him either – hands deep in his pockets, not quite meeting Jared’s eyes. "I don’t know if you know this," he says, "but with the mountains, we’re in something called a, a rain shadow?"  
  
"Yes, of course," Jared says, bewildered by this tangent. Honestly, he adores Richard and always will, regardless of what their relationship might be ten minutes from now, but trying to school _him_ on basic climatology? Who does he think he’s talking to?  
  
"It doesn’t rain a lot, is what I’m saying," Richard says. "So. I don’t know when I’m going to get another chance to do this and judging by the movies you like, it just seemed like a thing you’d really be into. Well, this or racing through an airport to ask you not to get on a plane, but. No real airport works like that."  
  
They’re completely down the rabbit-hole now, and all Jared can do is follow along and trust Richard knows where they’re headed. "No," he agrees, "I’m assuming the TSA don’t waive security checks for grand romantic gestures."  
  
Richard seems to exhale with his entire body. "Oh, good," he says, "I was getting nervous. More nervous. But we’re on the same page with this."  
  
Jared isn’t sure they’re even on the same book. He makes a start at untangling it in his head – something about the romantic airport chase trope, although he can’t work out what that has to do with Richard dumping him – but then Richard’s stepping forward and reaching out.  
  
Richard’s hands are chilled around his own. Jared stares down at them, unable to process.  
  
"Jared," Richard says, and then, tentatively, "Donald...? Jared. Sorry. I know it’s your real name, but I think of you as Jared."  
  
"I don’t mind what you call me."  
  
"I know." Richard smiles at that. And takes a breath. " _Jared_. I love you."  
  
Jared, barring those couple of days on Peter Gregory’s island that are still a disquieting blur in his memory, doesn’t lose track of time. He doesn’t zone out. Later, he’ll google ‘out of body experience’, but right now ten or twenty seconds seem to have vanished from the world without explanation. He notices, with interest, that his hands are clamped around Richard’s now instead of the other way around.  
  
"...know we haven’t said it yet, and this was a stupid idea, I’ve been up way too long, you don’t have to say any..."  
  
"I love you," Jared says. "I love you. I love you." It’s difficult to say this and kiss Richard at the same time, especially because he’s still holding his hands, but he does it. Right now, with Richard grinning foolishly up at him – Richard, who loves him, who came to tell him that at five in the morning because he thought he’d enjoy a declaration, like in the movies – he thinks he could do anything.  
  
What he should do, though, what he will do, is get Richard inside and out of the rain.  
  
"Is it still raining?" Richard says. "I hadn’t noticed."  
  
And 'actually a worse performance than Andie MacDowell's' is not a critique Jared throws around lightly, even inside his own head, but somehow, in this moment, it’s the most perfect thing he’s ever seen.  
  



End file.
